n TASTE
From left, Terry Downey and Brandi Kaspar work
in the Mad Will’s testing and development room.
Healdsburg. Mad Will’s is unusual as it
runs on two models — private-label brand-
ing and co-packing.
“Private label” means a company —
say, a boutique market — comes to Mad
Will’s and pays to have a multi-product line
bottled and labeled with its own brand,
but made from Mad Will’s recipes. “It’s
our product with your label,” as Caruthers
puts it. Private-labeling costs $350 to
$500 for a minimum order of 10 cases,
depending on the product. For instance,
chocolate sauce costs more to make than
barbecue sauce.
Mad Will’s makes more than 100 prod-
ucts for its 200-plus private-label cus-
tomers, which include Oto’s Market in
Sacramento, Mollie Stone’s Markets and
Lunardi’s Markets in the Bay Area, and Cal
Mart in Calistoga.
“We [recently] created four new
private-label products, with more under
development,” says Kaspar, who holds a
degree in food science and technology
from UC Davis. Also, she and her team are
making “clean” ingredients for some of
the older private-label recipes, verifying
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they’re Whole Foods compliant (free of
certain chemicals).
The second Mad Will’s model, co-pack-
ing, is when a food entrepreneur has a
proprietary recipe and wants to mar-
ket it. “It’s their product and their label,”
Caruthers says. “They bring us the recipe,
we help them formulate it and put it into
production.” Bartosh says the compa-
ny has more than 50 regular co-packer
partners and is averaging two new ones
a week.
The initial cost to co-pack — from first
analysis to finished product — is $7,500
for 100 cases. “We don’t want someone to
come here with their nest egg and have no
idea what the market is like, so we’re edu-
cating them and making sure they’re ready
to go,” Caruthers says. Mad Will’s also ad-
vocates for its customers, working with
brokers to get their products into stores.
One Mad Will’s co-packing partner
is Michael Loubier, founder of Loubier
Gourmet in Benicia. The former restau-
rateur walked in with two proprietary
BBQ sauces that soon were in stores and
on his website, along with a line of five
seasonings. Loubier has since formulated
nine more sauce skus. In Sacramento, his
products are in Corti Bros., Taylor’s and
Compton’s markets.
A newcomer to Mad Will’s is co-packer
B&R Farms in Hollister. Owners Mari and
Jim Rossi own an heirloom apricot orchard
from which they source five skus from
family recipes. “We want to add a few new
products to our line before the holidays,”
Mari Rossi says. B&R products are in Ra-
ley’s and Bel Air markets.
One niche market Mad Will’s is de-
veloping is private labeling for corporate
entities. It already has a relationship with
the San Jose Giants minor-league baseball
team with a barbecue sauce and is ap-
proaching craft breweries.
“Food trends are changing to local,
fresh and sustainable, and we’re right there
with that,” Yamauchi says. “The timing
couldn’t be better.” n
Allen Pierleoni is a freelance writer in Sac-
ramento. He worked for The Sacramento
Bee as a writer and editor in the features
department for 30 years.